Thank you all for your thoughts about it. The 2 terms "character disorder" and "characterological issues" both came from psychiatrists/psychoanalysts. Interestingly, the person in my life who has been identified, at least in part, in that way, has found it very freeing, rather than as a hurtful judgment. It has given him permission in a way to keep on the "self" destructive path of cheating on and lying to his wife, lying to the many women he has met online and in person, and completely abandoning his young child, while at the same time saying he misses him. This unacceptable behavior not "his fault" because it's a characterological issue and he can't help himself. For the depression, there's a lot of meds, but for the characterological issues, that just takes time and may never change. He's now come to accept and seem pretty comfortable with the lifestyle he's chosen which excludes the family he created as though we never existed.